Ronan O’Malley, 62, spent 38 years hauling perch and whitefish out of Lake Huron before a 2011 winch accident sheared off his left ring and pinky fingers, pushing him into retirement building custom fishing rods out of his two-car garage outside Alpena. For 12 years, he’d carried a chip on his shoulder thick as lake ice in January, bitter that his ex-wife had left six months after the accident, saying she couldn’t spend the rest of her life waiting for him to get injured or lost at sea. He’d turned down every set-up his buddies tried to arrange, avoided the local diner’s weekend brunch rush where half the town’s single women his age gathered, convinced anyone who showed interest only wanted a free custom rod or someone to mow their lawn for free.
He’d only shown up to the annual Perch Festival beer tent because his old deckhand Jimmy had begged, said if Ronan spent one more weekend holed up in his workshop sanding cedar grips he was gonna hide all his rod wrapping thread. He was three drafts in, calloused hands wrapped around a dented plastic cup, leaning against a splintered picnic table when the woman slid into the bench across from him, all the other tables packed tight with festival goers yelling over the bluegrass band. She had sun-bleached auburn hair tied back with a neon yellow fishing line hair tie, a faded Carhartt shirt with a county extension logo stitched on the chest, work boots caked in shore mud, a smudge of silver fish blood on the cuff of her jeans. “Sorry to intrude,” she said, nodding at the half-full plate of fried perch on his table. “Every other spot’s taken by a pack of 16-year-olds chugging seltzer.”
Ronan grunted, shifting his weight like he might stand up and leave. He knew who she was: Marnie Hale, 58, the new fisheries extension agent who’d moved to town three months prior, the one all the local fishermen complained was gonna bury them in new sustainable fishing regulations. He’d avoided every community meeting she’d hosted, left every email she’d sent unopened, fully planned to keep avoiding her until she packed up and left for a bigger city. Then she nodded at the custom rod leaning against the table leg, the one he’d brought to drop off with a tournament angler who was in town for the weekend. “That your build?” she asked, leaning forward, her forearms resting on the table inches from his. “The thread wrap on the guides is 12-denier nylon, right? That’s the only stuff that doesn’t fray after a season of bouncing around in a boat storage locker.”
He blinked, surprised. Most people didn’t know the difference between 12-denier and 20-denier thread, let alone a county extension agent. He nodded, taking a slow sip of beer. She reached across the table to tap the abalone inlay on the reel seat, her wrist brushing his scarred left hand by accident. He flinched first, ready for the usual awkward pause or the polite “what happened to your hand?” question, but she didn’t even glance at his missing fingers, just ran a finger along the smooth cedar grip. “My dad used that same abalone for the lures he carved,” she said, a soft smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Said it glowed just enough under the water to drive the perch crazy.”
They talked for 45 minutes, him slowly unclenching, her teasing him about the rumors that he’d yelled at a park ranger last spring for trying to stop him from selling bait out of his garage, him teasing her about the fish blood on her jeans that she’d clearly been trying to hide all day. She bought him a fourth beer when his ran out, said she owed him for letting her crash his table, and when the band switched to a slow George Strait waltz, she stood up and held out her hand. “I know you’re the grumpiest rod builder on the lake,” she said, laughing when he raised an eyebrow. “But my feet are sore from walking 10 miles of shoreline today, and you look like you’ve got good balance from all those years on a rocking boat. Dance with me?”
He hesitated for three full seconds, every part of his brain screaming that this was a bad idea, that he was gonna get hurt again, that he was too old for this kind of silly, fluttery feeling in his chest. Then he took her hand, his rough, calloused fingers wrapping around hers, and stood up. They stepped into the small open space between the picnic tables, his hand resting light on her hip, hers on his shoulder. He stepped on her boot once, early on, and she snort-laughed, leaning in a little so her shoulder pressed against his chest. He could smell coconut shampoo and lake water in her hair, hear the lilt in her voice when she said she’d been trying to track him down for months, that she was the one who’d pushed through the county rule exemption that let small-scale bait sellers operate out of their garages without a $500 license, that she’d found out he was the one who’d anonymously donated $2,000 to the local youth fishing program earlier that year.
The song ended a minute later, and they stayed standing there for a beat, hands still clasped, the crowd cheering around them for the band. She tilted her head up, eyes glinting in the string lights strung across the tent roof. “The sunset over the north pier is supposed to be perfect tonight,” she said. “Wanna walk down there after this wraps up? I’ll even buy you a frozen custard on the way.”
Ronan didn’t even think about the half-finished rod sitting on his workbench back home, didn’t think about the 12 years of bitterness he’d been carrying around like a lead weight in his pocket, didn’t think about the ex-wife who’d moved to Florida and remarried three years prior. He just nodded, grabbing his rod off the table leg while she slung her canvas tote over her shoulder. Her hand brushed his when they stepped out of the tent into the cool late August air, the sound of crickets chirping loud in the grass along the roadside, the pink and orange glow of the setting sun painting the surface of the lake half a mile away.
